US, Colombia revive push for free trade pact

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Labor activist Francisco Antonio Abello helped lead a strike last year that won raises and health insurance for 185 workers at an oil palm plantation on the Caribbean coast.

Four months later, two gunmen confronted Abello, 55, on the plantation as he was working his irrigation pump and shot him three times, said Jose Borja, president of the Sintrainagro farmworkers union's chapter in the region.

"No one has been arrested in the killing," Borja said, adding that no one knows exactly who might be responsible. "Things are bad here. Lots of armed groups."

The perils Colombian labor activists face have taken center stage now that U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to push for congressional approval of a long-stalled free trade agreement between the United States and Colombia.

Colombia remained the most dangerous country in the world last year for labor activists, though the 52 union organizers killed represented an improvement from a decade ago, when nearly 200 labor leaders were killed annually.

According to the International Trade Union Confederation, 48 of the 101 union activists killed globally in 2009 were Colombian, with Guatemala following at 16, Honduras with 12 and Mexico at six.

The U.S.-Colombia trade pact was signed in 2006, but the Democrats who then controlled the U.S. Congress refused to ratify it, arguing that Colombia had not done enough to stem anti-union violence.

That attitude changed after the 2010 mid-term elections when the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives to Republicans, who argue that free trade agreements produce domestic job growth.

Human rights groups and U.S. and Colombian labor unions continue to oppose the trade pact, however, saying Colombia has not done enough to halt anti-unionist violence.

They consider unrealistic a 10-point "action plan" for protecting Colombian labor activists that Obama announced on April 7 and that Colombia is supposed to implement by June 15.

On Monday, a high-powered bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation led by Michigan Rep. Dave Camp, Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, plans to visit Colombia to discuss the trade pact with President Juan Manuel Santos and other senior officials.

Santos said Saturday that he has asked three former presidents of Colombia, including his immediate predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, to lobby the U.S. Congress to ratify the treaty.

Union and human rights activists express serious doubts about the action plan being anything more than a pretext for getting the trade pact ratified in the U.S. Senate.

"Words are one thing, reality another," said Tarsicio Mora, president of Colombia's CUT labor federation, one of two main union groups in this Andean nation. "The constitution here says life is a fundamental right, yet we keep getting killed."

"If this comes to be, the medicine could be worse than the illness," he said.

Vivanco expressed particular concern about the plan's demand that Colombia's chief prosecutor accelerate investigations into cases of union member killings that have shown progress and temporarily close less-advanced probes.

"I think the more adequate solution is to increase the number of prosecutors and not close cases," Vivanco said.

He and other critics said many of the plan's requirements, while laudable, would be very difficult to achieve by June 15. They include a reform of Colombia's penal code, which requires a legislative vote, to punish threats or acts against fundamental labor and human rights beginning with collective bargaining.

The long-neglected Colombia pact moved to the top of Obama's trade agenda in large part because key lawmakers in the U.S. Senate, including Ways and Means chairman Democrat Max Baucus of Montana and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, have insisted Congress ratify the Colombia agreement at the same time it approves a pending trade pact with South Korea.

With U.S. unemployment stubbornly high, no one in Washington wants to be accused of inhibiting job growth by opposing such agreements.

U.S. organized labor was incensed with Obama for negotiating the action plan with Colombia without consulting them.

United Steelworkers senior attorney Daniel Kovalik called that an "act of disrespect" by Obama, and noted that at least six Colombian labor leaders have been killed so far this year.

According to the steelworkers union, Colombia has one of the lowest unionization rates in the world, with 70,000 people - in a work force of 20 million - allowed collective bargaining rights and 3.5 percent of workers belonging to unions.

The Colombia pact could increase U.S. exports to Colombia by $1 billion a year, its proponents say, while the South Korea agreement could be worth 10 times that amount to U.S. producers.

The United States is Colombia's top trading partner, destination of 39 percent of its exports. Two-way trade between the two countries totaled nearly $22 billion last year, with Colombia importing $9 billion in U.S. goods.

Former Colombia President Andres Pastrana said the free trade pact will get lost in the noise of the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign if it isn't approved by mid-year.

"We've spent five years discussing it, five years discussing measures and procedures and the entire improvement in human rights," he told The Associated Press.